


What You Don't Expect

by Kerirra



Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Low Chaos, a crack in the slab, ghost playthrough
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-05
Updated: 2017-06-05
Packaged: 2018-11-09 05:53:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,382
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11098269
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kerirra/pseuds/Kerirra
Summary: In the mission A Crack in the Slab, a low chaos Corvo or Emily clears the manor. When Stilton wakes up, it's to find all the guards knocked out and the ritual completed without him. It may not drive him mad this time around, but he won't be forgetting this night anytime soon.





	What You Don't Expect

**Author's Note:**

> The first time I played through the mission, it was miserable. I didn't really get how the timepiece worked, and I got terribly lost for like three hours trying to get the last couple runes and get back out. The second time, I was determined to not run into the same snags, so I knocked out literally every guard inside and in the back yard. As always, you don't get to see the aftermath, but I couldn't help thinking how awful it would be to be the first person to wake up after that.

Aramis Stilton hardly noticed the silence at first. The guards made noise, sure, but not all that much of it. The sounds of footfalls and absent grumbling gradually faded out, but Aramis didn't register it. He wasn't used to having guards around in the first place, and he had much heavier thoughts on his mind. 

The young Duke– Luca– wanted to have a séance at his manor with those... individuals he called friends. Brianna Ashworth was the curator of the conservatory, surely she had a workshop or an office or some such that could have been used. Grim Alex... well. Aramis didn't ask about her, and tried not to think about her too hard either. Could never be too careful, there. 

Kirin Jindosh had his own mansion though. Perhaps it was under renovation, but when was it not? But no. No, the séance had to happen there, in Aramis' own home. And he could hardly refuse. 

He missed Theodanis, he truly did. His Duke had been so kind, so wise. Truly, a good man. Under his rule, Serkonos had prospered, along with Aramis himself. It had been so easy, with Theodanis. He'd never minded Aramis' rough manners and had actively encouraged Aramis' attitude with regards to safe mining conditions. Once, when Aramis had confessed that his servants were talking about him behind his back again, Theodanis had laughed, told him to pay no mind to their gossip, and made him promise to write to the Duke himself if he was unsure in a matter. 

But now Theodanis was gone, and Aramis was left with the manor and the riches, but no clue what to do with it. His servants still gossiped. He tried not to listen. It didn't always work. Luca was crowned and... well. 

Luca was his father's son only in name, Aramis found himself thinking increasingly frequently. Where Theodanis had been kind, Luca was cruel. Where Theodanis had been wise, Luca was young and foolish; throwing lavish parties and giving no regard to the decay that begin the consume the edges of his domain. 

Good ruler or no, Luca was still his ruler, and he kept such thoughts to himself. Though he didn't speak his mind, his disapproval of Luca was probably obvious. Luca didn't seem altogether fond of him or his advice, but Aramis had his mines, and his title, so he was given at least the pretense of civility. But then he had received the request, and he wasn't sure what to do. 

Would this make the Duke more favorable towards him, or would it make him dangerous? And a séance... Aramis was no fool. He had been raised on the streets of Karnaca, and in its silver mines. He had seen his fair share of strange, unexplainable events. 

He didn't doubt the existence of the Outsider, and yet at the same time, he knew very well that the Outsider was not a benevolent deity. He was as likely to help as to hurt, and much more likely to do nothing at all. Attempts to borrow his power tended to end badly. Aramis privately thought that the Duke didn't understand the stakes of the game he was playing. He didn't think the ritual would work, and if it did, he rather thought the Duke would regret the success. 

The Abbey was also a consideration. Along with the Oracular Order, they had been gaining power in Serkonos. If word of tonight got out... 

The yard was completely silent. Aramis turned and paced the other way. But the Duke was here, surely no accusations could be drawn under these conditions. Unless the Duke himself drew them. But young Luca wouldn't, would he...?

Aramis turned around again. The yard was still deathly silent. He paused halfway across the gazebo. The guard stationed nearest to him had been complaining on and off about being hungry the whole time he'd been out there. He couldn't hear her anymore. In fact, he couldn't hear anything, except the faint, tinny strings of music from the house. He turned around. The guard wasn't there. In fact, he didn't see any guards. 

For a moment, he wondered if the ritual was already over, and his guests already gone. But no, surely he would have been told. Someone was supposed to fetch him when it was time for the ritual. Barring that, he would have been told his guests were leaving, if only by the guards themselves. 

Aramis took two steps out of the gazebo, then remembered the notebook he'd left out. Best not leave that where just anyone could find it, guards or no. He turned and hurried back under the cover of the gazebo. Had he left the book open like that? It looked like the text was facing opposite the chair, and surely he hadn't done that, there would be no reason for it. 

He leaned over to check, and barely registered the the text was indeed upside down when an arm closed over his neck from behind. He scrabbled at the arm ineffectually, scratching and clawing at it, but the thick fabric didn't yield, and black danced across his vision. 

\--

Aramis woke some time later, groggy and dazed. He had a terrible headache, and his neck ached awfully. He stared for a moment at the underside of a small table in incomprehension before his senses started filtering back. Cautiously, he sat up, noting that he was in the gazebo in the back yard. Why was he...

The memories came rushing back at once. The séance. The missing guards. The attacker. He looked around frantically, but everything looked much as he remembered it. His notebook was still on the table beside him, text still upside down. Someone had read it. His attacker had read it. 

Aramis stood on only vaguely steady legs, tucking the notebook into a pocket of his coat. He emerged from the gazebo slowly, searching his surroundings. He couldn't see his mystery attacker, but he hadn't seen them last time, either. And there was still the matter of the missing guards to consider. 

He found the first guard halfway back to the house. It was an accident, pure chance that he happened to trip over a booted foot that stuck out from under a bush. He scrambled around the bush, not sure if he was relived to have found one of the missing persons or not. It was the guard who'd been complaining about being hungry. 

With shaking hands, he reached for her neck. A moment of cold panic, then he found her pulse. As he watched, he could see her chest rise and fall. Not dead then, just sleeping. He slapped her cheeks, but she didn't stir. He dragged her around the bush into the light, and his eyes caught a flash of silver on her shoulder. 

There was some sort of dart there; a tiny glass tube with silver fittings and a tuft of feathers at the end. After a brief hesitation, he pulled it out to see it closer. The glass tube was empty, but Aramis could see a trace of a green liquid in the corners. He broke the glass on a nearby rock, then brought it up to his nose. The scent wasn't familiar, but it made his head spin and vision blur. He mentally upgraded 'asleep' to 'drugged with an unknown chemical'. 

He laid her out as comfortably as he could on the pathway, then went looking for the rest of his guard detail. He found them, stashed behind scaffolding and in bushes, tucked into uncomfortable-looking corners. After the third guard he found, he stopped dragging them out of their hiding places. He had to find out what was going on. 

Aramis opened the doors to the house with no small amount of trepidation. His heart was beating out of his chest; at any moment he expected to be ambushed again. The house was even worse than outside. Everything looked normal. Completely normal, except the halls were utterly deserted. No servants, no guards, no guests. It was like walking through a ghost town, only in his own home. 

Then he found the first pile of bodies. He moved a screen aside, expecting to see a blank wall behind it, but instead a servant's body tumbled off the top of a stack of perhaps four guards. The screen clattered noisily to the ground as Aramis scrambled backwards. For a moment, he was frozen, breath catching in his lungs in terror, waiting for the attacker to hear the noise and come running. 

When nothing happened, he reached for the servant's wrist. Still alive. The guards were similarly drugged or asleep, just as the ones outside had been. From then on, he found unconscious bodies in every room he entered. They were hidden, some of them quite creatively, but he was getting a feel for where to look. 

Aramis paused in the hall outside his study. Was that... He squinted, then moved a little closer. Yes indeed, that was a boot dangling off the edge of a bookcase. He felt hysterical laugher bubble up in his chest, but managed to quell it into choked gasps at the last minute. How had someone even gotten a body up there? If he hadn't found the dart and been choked out himself, Aramis thought he'd probably suspect the Outsider himself had visited his home. 

The door to the study was still locked, with the same numbers he'd left it on after letting his guests into the study. There was a note on the door from the Duke. In a daze, he read about the success of the ritual, and the Duke's annoyance at his lack of presence. The Duke seemed too pleased with the success to be altogether angry with him; there was even a positively jovial couple of lines near the bottom thanking Aramis for the use of his study. It was surreal. 

Just in case, Aramis pressed his ear to the keyhole. He could hear dripping water, a hissing that almost sounded like hundreds of voices whispering, and distantly, whale song. With a morbid sense of curiosity, he peered through the small opening. He was met with a gray haze, almost like fog, interspersed with swirls of blue that danced in time with the hissing. There was a humming sound building in the back of his mind, just slightly discordant. As he watched, a tendril smoke curled towards him.

He threw himself back from the door, almost stumbling down the stairs behind him in his haste. He was never going back in there. Never. There were many books in there, some of them important, but he'd been planning a new study anyway, and what was a few books, he thought hysterically. No, no number of books were worth opening that door. 

He wandered the rest of the house in a daze. He thought to check the vault, and nearly laughed at himself. It was a state-of-the-art vault, there was no way anyone could have broken in. But they had. Paintings were missing from their frames, coins and figurines gone. Not all of it, no. Not enough to cause him undue difficulties, just everything small enough to carry. That was still quite a lot. 

As he wandered, he noticed more signs of his visitor. Namely, more missing artifacts. His attacker– whoever it was– knocked him and every other person in the house out, got the combination to his study but didn't go in, and then took that opportunity to nick every small valuable item in the house. And, he noticed after a moment, all the food as well. 

Aramis started to calm down. He started to consider implications. Logistics cut through the haze like a dull knife. He'd had at least twenty guards at the event. Most, if not all, were somewhere in the house still, unconscious. Many of them were in positions that may be dangerous to wake in. He had to... He had to do something. Start somewhere.

He was standing in the middle of the hall, looking for the bodies he couldn't see but he was sure were there, where someone started pounding on the door. The loud noise cut through the music he'd forgotten to turn off, startling him and sending his heart pounding again. Aramis could see that the door wasn't locked from where he was standing, and there was no time to lock it. The handle was already turning. He froze, staring at the door. 

It opened partway, and a figure slipped through. For a moment, his brain refused to register the sight, then like a puppet with cut strings, the tension melted from his body. Aramis slumped to the floor, knees giving out suddenly. "Meagan," he sighed in relief. 

"Stilton? Stilton! Are you alright?" Suddenly Meagan was in his space, throwing one of his arms over her shoulders, pulling him to his feet. He leaned on her until he managed to get his feet under himself, then allowed her to pull him to a nearby couch.  
"Stilton, talk to me, what happened?" 

He told her, haltingly at first, but with growing confidence when she didn't interrupt. Then he showed her, taking her to the backyard and the first guard he'd found. Together, they carried the guards in from the yard, and found as many as they could inside the house. 

As they hauled down the last body, the one on the bookcase, Meagan growled, "If I ever find who did this, I'm going to knock them out and put them on the highest roof I can find. See how they like it." 

It was a testament to how much better he was already feeling that the comment made him laugh heartily, and nearly drop his end of the body. Meagan swore at him and he swore back and soon they were trading insults and laughter. 

The laid the body out in the hall and Aramis sighed, rubbing his shoulder. "The front yard next?" 

"There aren't any guards in the front. They left with your guests, I saw them."

"Small mercies."

Meagan eyed the guard just stirring, groaning and rubbing his head. She didn't point out how easily it could have been blood on his floors. She didn't need to. "Small mercies, indeed," she agreed.

**Author's Note:**

> I don't really think the Aramis/Theodanis thing is canon, but I've always been really interested in the way Luca pauses when he's saying, "I never should have kept him on just because he and my father were... close." I mean, maybe he's implying something else, but surely I'm not the only one whose brain immediately went there?


End file.
